meno’s special idea,a tree with no rootsa river with no source,a tree with no fragrancea tree with no glamoura tree with no crownmenos special revengea tree with no shadowa tree of paradoxes and grotesqueuncaringa negative hourstrangewayfarers smell the airnothinga visitor looksa path that lost itselfmenos ideea forestmade of raina strange air filled with bug’s singinga reality with no ideameno’s special ideathe coldest ideawith no concernunfeelingclustered leaves smeared into the landscapelike a voice full of burning resentmentand Meno sees unrealitygentle glowflickeringlike a brooding arm pulling to the last future

Also meno is mistaken, Ibsen is more synonymous with unreality that is in the apricot and bloody orange of the horizon, over the baby blue, under the invisible sky, which is what the evening glow found when it blew over human souls.

Guide wrote:Also meno is mistaken, Ibsen is more synonymous with unreality that is in the apricot and bloody orange of the horizon, over the baby blue, under the invisible sky, which is what the evening glow found when it blew over human souls.

Big sur and the oranges of Bosch Henry Miller

Nature evinces itself in the brain. Suddenly, this part of one which had been in abeyance, which one hardly knew was there, begins to exfoliate in all directions. The mind becomes a steaming jungle of thoughts." (p.93-94)

Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other.Neal Cassady (1926-1968), U.S. beat hero. Quoted in Gerald Nicosia, Memory Babe, ch. 5, sect. 5 (1983).

Guide wrote:Also meno is mistaken, Ibsen is more synonymous with unreality that is in the apricot and bloody orange of the horizon, over the baby blue, under the invisible sky, which is what the evening glow found when it blew over human souls.

Lit2Go

The Crimson Fairy Bookby Andrew Lang“LOVELY ILONKAThere was once a king’s son who told his father that he wished to marry.

‘No, no!’ said the king; ‘you must not be in such a hurry. Wait till you have done some great deed. My father did not let me marry till I had won the golden sword you see me wear.’

The prince was much disappointed, but he never dreamed of disobeying his father, and he began to think with all his might what he could do. It was no use staying at home, so one day he wandered out into the world to try his luck, and as he walked along he came to a little hut in which he found an old woman crouching over the fire.

‘Good evening, mother. I see you have lived long in this world; do you know anything about the three bulrushes?’

‘Yes, indeed, I’ve lived long and been much about in the world, but I have never seen or heard anything of what you ask. Still, if you will wait till to-morrow I may be able to tell you something.’

Well, he waited till the morning, and quite early the old woman appeared and took out a little pipe and blew in it, and in a moment all the crows in the world were flying about her. Not one was missing. Then she asked if they knew anything about the three bulrushes, but not one of them did.

The prince went on his way, and a little further on he found another hut in which lived an old man. On being questioned the old man said he knew nothing, but begged the prince to stay overnight, and the next morning the old man called all the ravens together, but they too had nothing to tell.

The prince bade him farewell and set out. He wandered so far that he crossed seven kingdoms, and at last, one evening, he came to a little house in which was an old woman.

‘Good evening, dear mother,’ said he politely.

‘Good evening to you, my dear son,’ answered the old woman. ‘It is lucky for you that you spoke to me or you would have met with a horrible death. But may I ask where are you going?’

‘I am seeking the three bulrushes. Do you know anything about them?’

‘I don’t know anything myself, but wait till to-morrow. Perhaps I can tell you then.’ So the next morning she blew on her pipe, and lo! and behold every magpie in the world flew up. That is to say, all the magpies except one who had broken a leg and a wing. The old woman sent after it at once, and when she questioned the magpies the crippled one was the only one who knew where the three bulrushes were.

Then the prince started off with the lame magpie. They went on and on till they reached a great stone wall, many, many feet high.

‘Now, prince,’ said the magpie, ‘the three bulrushes are behind that wall.’

The prince wasted no time. He set his horse at the wall and leaped over it. Then he looked about for the three bulrushes, pulled them up and set off with them on his way home. As he rode along one of the bulrushes happened to knock against something. It split open and, only think! out sprang a lovely girl, who said: ‘My heart’s love, you are mine and I am yours; do give me a glass of water.’

But how could the prince give it her when there was no water at hand? So the lovely maiden flew away. He split the second bulrush as an experiment and just the same thing happened.

How careful he was of the third bulrush! He waited till he came to a well, and there he split it open, and out sprang a maiden seven times lovelier than either of the others, and she too said: ‘My heart’s love, I am yours and you are mine; do give me a glass of water.’

This time the water was ready and the girl did not fly away, but she and the prince promised to love each other always. Then they set out for home.

They soon reached the prince’s country, and as he wished to bring his promised bride back in a fine coach he went on to the town to fetch one. In the field where the well was, the king’s swineherds and cowherds were feeding their droves, and the prince left Ilonka (for that was her name) in their care.

Unluckily the chief swineherd had an ugly old daughter, and whilst the prince was away he dressed her up in fine clothes, and threw Ilonka into the well.

The prince returned before long, bringing with him his father and mother and a great train of courtiers to escort Ilonka home. But how they all stared when they saw the swineherd’s ugly daughter! However, there was nothing for it but to take her home; and, two days later, the prince married her, and his father gave up the crown to him.

But he had no peace! He knew very well he had been cheated, though he could not think how. Once he desired to have some water brought him from the well into which Ilonka had been thrown. The coachman went for it and, in the bucket he pulled up, a pretty little duck was swimming. He looked wonderingly at it, and all of a sudden it disappeared and he found a dirty looking girl standing near him. The girl returned with him and managed to get a place as housemaid in the palace.

Of course she was very busy all day long, but whenever she had a little spare time she sat down to spin. Her distaff turned of itself and her spindle span by itself and the flax wound itself off; and however much she might use there was always plenty left.

When the queen—or, rather, the swineherd’s daughter—heard of this, she very much wished to have the distaff, but the girl flatly refused to give it to her. However, at last she consented on condition that she might sleep one night in the king’s room. The queen was very angry, and scolded her well; but as she longed to have the distaff she consented, though she gave the king a sleeping draught at supper.

Then the girl went to the king’s room looking seven times lovelier than ever. She bent over the sleeper and said: ‘My heart’s love, I am yours and you are mine. Speak to me but once; I am your Ilonka.’ But the king was so sound asleep he neither heard nor spoke, and Ilonka left the room, sadly thinking he was ashamed to own her.

Soon after the queen again sent to say that she wanted to buy the spindle. The girl agreed to let her have it on the same conditions as before; but this time, also, the queen took care to give the king a sleeping draught. And once more Ilonka went to the king’s room and spoke to him; whisper as sweetly as she might she could get no answer.

Now some of the king’s servants had taken note of the matter, and warned their master not to eat and drink anything that the queen offered him, as for two nights running she had given him a sleeping draught. The queen had no idea that her doings had been discovered; and when, a few days later, she wanted the flax, and had to pay the same price for it, she felt no fears at all.

At supper that night the queen offered the king all sorts of nice things to eat and drink, but he declared he was not hungry, and went early to bed.

The queen repented bitterly her promise to the girl, but it was too late to recall it; for Ilonka had already entered the king’s room, where he lay anxiously waiting for something, he knew not what. All of a sudden he saw a lovely maiden who bent over him and said: ‘My dearest love, I am yours and you are mine. Speak to me, for I am your Ilonka.’

At these words the king’s heart bounded within him. He sprang up and embraced and kissed her, and she told him all her adventures since the moment he had left her. And when he heard all that Ilonka had suffered, and how he had been deceived, he vowed he would be revenged; so he gave orders that the swineherd, his wife and daughter should all be hanged; and so they were.

The next day the king was married, with great rejoicings, to the fair Ilonka; and if they are not yet dead—why, they are still living.

Too brief, thy life on highland wolds Where close the glaciers jut; Too soon the snowstorm's cloak enfolds Stone byre and pine-log hut. Then wilt thou ply with hearth ablaze The winter's well-worn tasks; -- But spin thy wool with cheerful face: One sunset in the mountain pays For all their winter asks.

meno = shallowmeno = unnecessarymeno = what the bubbled up from thoughtlessness meno = cerebral and stupidmeno = a desiccated wold without backbonemeno, a parade of someone else's necessity meno, someone else, the mob as a personification

To his Own Beloved SelfThe Author DedicatesThese LinesSource: 20th Century Russian Literature.

Six.Ponderous. The chimes of a clock.“Render unto Caesar ... render unto God...”But where’ssomeone like me to dock?Where’11 I find a lair?

Were Ilike the ocean of oceans little,on the tiptoes of waves I’d rise,I’d strain, a tide, to caress the moon.Where to find someone to loveof my size,the sky too small for her to fit in?

Were I pooras a multimillionaire,it’d still be tough.What’s money for the soul? – thief insatiable.The goldof all the Californias isn’t enoughfor my desires’ riotous horde.

I wish I were tongue-tied,like Dante or Petrarch,able to fire a woman’s heart,reduce it to ashes with verse-filled pages!My wordsand my loveform a triumphal arch:through it, in all their splendour,leaving no trace, will passthe inamoratas of all the ages!

Were Ias quiet as thunder,how I’d wail and whine!One groan of minewould start the world’s crumbling cloister shivering.And ifI’d end up by roaringwith all of its power of lungs and more – the comets, distressed, would wring their handsand from the sky’s roofleap in a fever.

If I were dim as the sun,night I’d drillwith the rays of my eyes,and alsoall by my lonesome,radiant selfbuild up the earth’s shriveled bosom.

On I’ll pass,dragging my huge love behind me.On whatfeverish night, deliria-ridden,by what Goliaths was I begot – I, so bigand by no one needed?

Vladimir Mayakovsky Archive

and this :

When you came in the air went outAnd every shadow filled up with doubtI don't know who you think you areBut before the night is throughI wanna do bad things with youI'm the kind to sit up in his roomHeart sick an' eyes filled up with blueI don't know what you've done to meBut I know this much is trueI wanna do bad things with you, okayWhen you came in the air went outAnd all those shadows there filled up with doubtI don't know who you think you areBut before the night is throughI wanna do bad things with youI wanna do real bad things with youI don't know what you've done to meBut I know this much is trueI wanna do bad things with youI wanna do real bad things with you

Last edited by Meno_ on Thu Oct 25, 2018 1:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them!Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961), French

PUBLISHED7 DECEMBER 2016Calum Gardner talks about editing a special edition of Barthes Studies exploring the writer’s relationship to poetryroland-barthesRoland BarthesWhat kind of academic journal is Barthes Studies?

Barthes Studies is an open-access online journal dedicated to the work of influential French literary and cultural theorist and critic Roland Barthes. It’s the only such journal in English (although there is an older French equivalent, the Revue Roland Barthes), and it was founded by Neil Badmington in 2015 with an issue that marked the centenary of Barthes’ birth. It’s interdisciplinary, has published articles by those working in French studies, English studies, literary theory, and cultural theory, and is open to those working in any area that has to do with Barthes. Because of the breadth and variety of his interests and writings, this is a very wide remit indeed!

What inspired you to oversee an issue devoted to the subject of poetry?

I think a few years ago, many people who are interested in Barthes, particularly in the UK, were seeing that there was a gap: it was commonly assumed that Barthes had something to say that was of relevance to poetry, and perhaps experimental poetry in particular, but why had so little been written about Barthes and poetry? I looked at a lot of books about poetry and found that in the index they would have one or two references to Barthes, but that these would lead to passing references to his most famous ‘The Death of the Author’ – an essay we assumed all the poets and poetry critics were familiar with, but nobody wanted to seem to talk about why, or how they got that way. When I started my PhD at Cardiff’ in 2013, I was hoping to fill this gap.

“[I]t was commonly assumed that Barthes had something to say that was of relevance to poetry, and perhaps experimental poetry in particular, but why had so little been written about Barthes and poetry?”

I was already working on Barthes Studies as Reviews Editor when Neil and I came up with the idea of making Volume 2 a special issue on poetry. I was invited to speak at the ‘Barthes and Poetry’ Conference organised by Andy Stafford, Nigel Saint, Richard Hibbitt, and Claire Lozier at Leeds University in March 2015, and that conference became the intellectual basis for the issue, so I owe a great deal to them as well. I think we have started to do some of the thinking that will bridge the gaps between Barthes and poetry, and orient it as a subject of inquiry for many more readers and scholars to come.

In what ways can Barthes inform the way we read, write, or understand poetry today?

roland-barthes1Roland BarthesIn many ways, Barthes doesn’t like poetry; depending on which of our special issue’s contributors you ask, he may even ‘hate’ or ‘fear’ it, and avoids talking about it where possible. But one of the major insights we draw from Barthes is that writing is not the sole product of a single writer. Rather, it is co-produced by its readers, and we have to engage enthusiastically in that co-production if we want to learn new things about poetry from Barthes.

Most of the critical material in the issue was written, or at least initial conceived of, before the big political events of 2016, but my editorial, ‘The Terrible Power of Language’, was written in amongst them. Although many people think of Barthes as an apolitical writer, in his autobiography Roland Barthes (1975), he explained why: when we allow politics to be the ‘fundamental science of the real’, it ‘checkmates’ language. Talk all you want, someone might say to the theorist or poet, but this is the real world. But as Barthes points out, it isn’t, and politics is eventually evacuated of meaning, and becomes ‘Prattle’. Poetry’s role is to smash this kind of language by refusing to use it.

However, when we give up on easy, meaningless speech, our writing becomes ‘unreadable’. This charge, levelled at all kinds of poetry but particularly at experimental writing, was also familiar to Barthes, and in a 1969 essay only recently published for the first time in English, ‘Ten Reasons to Write’, he defended the ‘unreadable’, saying: ‘It is revolutionary because it is associated not with a different political regime but with “another way of feeling, another way of thinking”.’ Being defiantly unreadable – or, as Barthes also calls it in that essay, ‘counter-readable’ – in an age that gives unprecedented political power to Prattle is perhaps poetry’s most important job. Does a poem effect change or resist violence? Maybe not. But it offers some thinking- and feeling-space to help us do so.

How do you think poetry and theory, or philosophy more broadly, inform each other?

It’s very hard to generalise because there is so much being written which is classified as “poetry”. Some poets have very little interest in theory, preferring to draw instead on nature, history, politics, or other aspects of the culture, and to define formal elements of their practice against . However, as a practicing poet and editor of the poetry journal Zarf, I see how much theory informs the intellectual life of many poets, particularly those working in experimental modes. They rightly identify theory of all kinds as a rich resource to incorporate into writing that wants to say something in a new way.

“[…] as a practicing poet and editor of the poetry journal Zarf, I see how much theory informs the intellectual life of many poets, particularly those working in experimental modes. They rightly identify theory of all kinds as a rich resource to incorporate into writing that wants to say something in a new way.”

There are also perhaps some kinds of thinking that can only be done in poetry, movements and connections that can’t be made through the kind of argumentation that philosophical thought demands but which can be done with a command of language as a set of flexible, breakable forms. Such texts bear the marks of some nuanced theoretical or philosophical thinking, but they don’t demand it of their readers: in fact, what they require is that the reader be willing to do some thinking that is non-theoretical, un-analytical, and let meanings come together in what may seem like ‘unreasonable’ ways.

What’s next for you?

I’m currently working on a monograph based on my PhD thesis on how English-language poets in the 1970s and 80s responded to Barthes. In this I want to explore some of the things that have not yet been said about Barthes – how does engagement with a radically impersonal doctrine like ‘The Death of the Author’ mean when the function of writing – particularly poetry and other modes of writing on the edge – is to bolster an experience that is under threat of erasure? I want to work with Barthes to produce a reading of him that makes him more valuable than ever to poets and readers of poetry.

My next project, which I’m also in the early stages of planning and researching, will be about catachresis, the rhetorical trope of using the wrong words. How do forms of discourse which re-appropriate language, like poetry, use this ‘wrongness’ or ‘slippage’ to have the effect they do?

Note: the above points to Barthes' attempt to structure and legitimize 'irrationalize' language by structuring which is invalidated by Derrida, whereby forcing Barthes to counter with a defensive search for a transcendental.

Ezra Pound is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry. In the early teens of the twentieth century, he opened a seminal exchange of work and ideas between British and American writers, and was famous for the generosity with which he advanced the work of such major contemporaries as W. B. Yeats, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H. D., James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and especially T. S. Eliot.

His own significant contributions to poetry begin with his promulgation of Imagism, a movement in poetry which derived its technique from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry—stressing clarity, precision, and economy of language and foregoing traditional rhyme and meter in order to, in Pound's words, "compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome." His later work, for nearly fifty years, focused on the encyclopedic epic poem he entitled The Cantos.

Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho, on October 30, 1885. He completed two years of college at the University of Pennsylvania and earned a degree from Hamilton College in 1905. After teaching at Wabash College for two years, he travelled abroad to Spain, Italy, and London, where, as the literary executor of the scholar Ernest Fenellosa, he became interested in Japanese and Chinese poetry. He married Dorothy Shakespear in 1914 and became London editor of the Little Review in 1917.

In 1924, he moved to Italy; during this period of voluntary exile, Pound became involved in Fascist politics, and did not return to the United States until 1945, when he was arrested on charges of treason for broadcasting Fascist propaganda by radio to the United States during World War II. In 1946, he was acquitted, but declared mentally ill and committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. During his confinement, the jury of the Bollingen Prize for Poetry (which included a number of the most eminent writers of the time) decided to overlook Pound's political career in the interest of recognizing his poetic achievements, and awarded him the prize for the Pisan Cantos (1948). After continuous appeals from writers won his release from the hospital in 1958, Pound returned to Italy and settled in Venice, where he died, a semi-recluse, on November 1, 1972.

"2. Submissive to everything, open, listening" - so that's an attitude of mind of.. submissive to any thought that comes along - about fucking your mother, or about...I don't know, anything it is that is most.. common, and most forbidden, anything that comes along in your mind that is.. fucking God, if you want to, anything that you wouldn't want, necessarily, anybody to hear, but you hear yourself, and so, "submissive to everything" ("submissive" meaning, to.. an attitude, like tender, lamb-like, innocent openness to.. when you're writing, openness to the world, so that you.. so you're not trying.. so you get in as much as possible, that you understand as much as possible, because you're not laying a trip and not resisting and not insisting but actually open-handed, open-hearted, listening to the promptings of your own nature, your own mind, your thoughts, (reading your thoughts, actually, the thoughts that rise spontaneously)

"3. (this is Kerouac's own medicinal prescription) - "Never get drunk outside yr own house" (because he would go into New York and get really drunk and get fucked up and lose his notebooks and..) - 4. (this is really important) - "Be in love with yr own life" (which is to say, Walt Whitman or Henry David Thoreau , or me, or Gregory Corso, or Buddha, or.. whoever it is that really digs his own existence, appreciates his own existence, "find(s) no fat sweeter than that which sticks to (his) own bones " ["I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones"], like Walt Whitman). The line is "Be in love with your life. In Kerouac's case, and lesser in mine, but strong in his case was the fact that he saw his whole life as a giant heroic myth and so he was able to write about any part of his life because it was all part of the giant heroic myth, just like, say, if you saw this whole week as part of a giant heroic myth, any little conversation in the bathroom would be fascinating, any minor escapade with a mouse in the corner would be an event of enormous historic importance as a footnote. So, all the footnotes of your own life. So, "be in love with yr own life", be in love with life. So that's.. In other words, you can't take a doleful attitude and say, "Oh well, I don't like myself and I'm a shit. I want to write so I can get myself better than I am, or maybe somebody will like me then, or maybe it'll be a..maybe I'll make some money." But just imagine the energy if you actually thought that you were the hero of your own existence and that when you died, there was no more going to be that hero in your existence. So you're the hero of your own existence because nobody else could possibly be the hero of your existence. So therefore you have to be in love with your life, or you'd have to take the attitude towards your own life that it's writ in golden letters - "the one and only life". This is your life, and so therefore that attitude, this is (my) life is the proper attitude, which means straight back (like you're sitting on a horse, riding on a horse in eternity through life, throwing thunderbolts ) - "Be in love with yr life"

5 - Something that you feel will find its own form - So you get an idea and you write it down, without worrying if you're going to make it a sonnet or quatrains (unless you have so mastered blues, or quatrains, or sonnets, that you can write them as swift as you can play "Chopsticks" on the piano, unless you're so good and swift at rhyming or terza rima, or rondeaux, or sonnets). There's nothing wrong with forms as long as you don't have to force yourself , yeah? - or rock 'n roll songs (I find I can write almost as fast and rhyme for rock 'n roll as write free verse so it doesn't make any difference - like at the dance last night, I was carrying on, making up rhymed verses).

How do you learn forms? - Well, I learned forms as a kid. My father was a high-school English teacher and so I read the Untermeyer anthologies and saw all the forms in the high-school books (they didn't have many in those days, they didn't know very many, you know, it was, like a standard nineteen-twenties, very provincial idea of what forms were, not big extensive ones - that it was iambic.. Well, first of all, I learned how to count iambic and trochaic meters - Does everybody know how to count? - heavy and light accents - Does everybody know what an iambic meter is? - Raise your hand if you do (now) raise your hand if you don't (raise your hand if you don't, please) . So it's about a third to a half . Well, how do you learn it? Somebody's gotta tell ya, I guess. You gotta ask. Well that's a whole question ofthe classical forms, whether to take it up now, I don't know, we might take it up next time.Next time I.. for the next class, I will bring in a single page which has every one of the classical meters and pass it out - from Greek and Latin - Trochee, Spondee, but also Cretic, Amphibrach, well, the two-syllable meters, the three-syllable meters, the four-syllable meters, like da-da-da-da, de-da-da-da, de da-da-da, and there are five-syllable meters like boom-boom-ba-da-da, boom-boom-ba-da-da - "Lo, lord, Thou rightest", "Droop herbs and flowers/Fall fruits and showers" (Ben Jonson for the last two, and "Lo, lord, Thou ridest" - Hart Crane's Hurricane). (I've) forgot what the name of that is. It's used by the Greeks in the height of their plays when they want to make ecstatic choruses. - Da da de-da-da - But, I'm sorry, I'm getting lost, because I'd like to talk first about the mind-attitude, rather than the.. the mind-attitudes towards writing, and later on, maybe, we'll get into forms, ok? - But if you want to learn forms, I'll bring in a sheet which will give you all the forms, not all of them, (all of the meters, rather) and we can talk about forms. But I want to talk about open form for the moment (and also, you can always get them out of a book, or out of a regular teacher, a regular poetry teacher in high school - High School, the old 1930's high-school books had lots, and there, the old college anthologies, in the back, usually had big expositions of dimeter, monometer, trimeter, quadrameter, (tetrameter), four-beat lines. I grew up on it so my ear is good but I found that I had to get rid of it, had to get rid of the classical forms, in order to notate my own tongue as it went along in my own mind. Something that you feel will find its own form, Kerouac says, which is to say that the thoughts that occur to your mind in the sequence that they occur, and for that it would be useful to read the essay "Projective Verse" by Charles Olson in the anthology The New American Poetry 1945-1960. How many are familiar with that book, the Don Allen anthology? - And how many are not? - okay, almost a majority are not, so I'd recommend that as a survey of the poetry that surrounded Kerouac and the Beat Generation, Grove Press. Grove Press. The New American Poetry. It's just been re-issued (originally it was The New American Poetry 1945-1960, edited by Don Allen). And if you can get it in a second-hand bookstore, the old edition, that's the real authentic one. This year [1982] a new edition of The New American Poetry edited by Don Allen was issued by Grove Press which dropped some poets and added some more.But, at the end of it, they have a lot of essays by the poets on how they found their own form and how they wrote their poems, essays by Kerouac, essays by Gary Snyder, essays by Robert Duncan, by me, by Gregory Corso, and those are worth looking at, and the one I'm recommending from that book is "Projective Verse" by Charles Olson. And the thing that Olson says is that "one perception must immediately lead to another". In other words, don't get hung up trying to fill up a flash, write down your flash and go on to the next flash, next flash-thought.. Keep the mind moving, keep the perceptions.. that is to say because your mind is having new perceptions every half-minute, don't get hung-up on one of themand try to get stuck with it because you'll set-up a feed-back. Instead, junp from one thing to another fast, jump from one thought to another fast, as the thoughts rise during the time that you are writing, and don't go looking for a thought that you had a half an hour ago or before you started writing, just the thoughts that you have while you're writing, because that, clearly, is much easier to do. Otherwise you stop the natural flow of what's going on as you're writing and you short-circuit it trying to retrieve something that you thought two days ago or half-an-hour before, or try and think up something smarter than the thing you thought. And to try and think of something smarter than what you're thinking, than what you actually thought, is just a waste of time, because if you just hang around and take downthe thoughts you're thinking of at the moment, sooner of later you'll think of something smarter than the last thought anyway. It's funny, if you stop the whole process of thought to think of something smarter, all you do is think of the word -"smarter","smarter","smarter". So you set-up a feed-back. So the thing is '"one perception must immediately lead on to another", or follow your perceptions. And Robert Creeley contributed the phrase to Olson in that essay, "Form is never more than an extension of Content" and that means the same as something you will feel will find its own form - "Form is never more than an extension of Content" - like.. I was thinking of a poem of Philip Lamantia... (So if that were a line of poetry - "Form is never more than an extension of Content - like".. colon on the page - "like, colon , like.. I was thinking of a poem of Philip Lamantia" - The form of those three lines is exactly as said, in other words, is identical with their content. And there's a great poem by Philip Lamantia that goes.. from his Selected Poems, City Lights ( I paraphrase it, because I don't have it here) - "I long for the super essential light of the darkness, I long for Christ on the cross, I long for the blood of the beauteous heavens, I long for the immense vegetable turnips of Jesus Christ's victory, I long for.. it is nameless what I long for". And the line goes "I long for the - blank, stop, go down to the next line, continue - "It is nameless what I long for". "I long for the… it is nameless what I long for", It's just the way his mind went. So that's an example of a thought finding its own form on the page, or an example of what Kerouac says, "Something that you feel will find its own form" - Is this clear? Is there anybody who doesn't understand what I was just saying? Please, if you don't understand, let me know, because it means that I haven't said it clearly, it doesn't mean that you're dumn

(7) "Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind" - In other words, allow any thought - "8. Write anything you want bottomless from bottom of the mind - "Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind - what you realy want to write about instead of what you think you're supposed to write about - "9. The unspeakable visions of the individual" - that's such a funny phrase - "the unspeakable visions of the individual" - something, more or less, probably derived from an amphetamine high - "the unspeakable visions" - so.. because Kerouac at that time did write a good deal on amphetamine (and it wasn't so good an idea, (he) burned his body out doing that, made it harder to write novels later, because it's more of an ordeal to take a lot of amphetamine and then go write for twenty days on amphetamine, and then get totally physically exhausted and have to not write again for another year, and not write a.. one single work, but to accomplish a single work he did it in intense bursts and for several years he was using amphetamines to complete.. like in The Subterraneans) -"The unspeakable visions of the individual" is the title of a series of archive, books, put out by some guests here, the Knights, archives of Beat writers, taken from this little phrase, "the unspeakable visions of the individual". (10.) "No time for poetry but exactly what is" - This is what I was talking avout before. No time for deliberate "I'm going to write something that they can put up in a museum or in an anthology", "No time for poetry but exactly what is", what is in your mind - (11) "Visionary tics shivering in the chest" - "That beautiful cute boy I saw yesterday!" - "Visionary tics shivering in the chest" - (12) "In tranced fixation dreaming before object before you" - In other words, you set up the picture in your mind of what it is you want to describe, somebody's face (I think Kerouac has an "old tea-cup for a face" or "a trip across America") - I think he would sit first, figure out (the) picture in the mind, picture it in his mind, the whole thing that it was going to be into, get it all together, and then.. then write, letting the picture suggest the words - (13) "Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition". In other words, like Philip Lamantia said, "I long for the… It is nameless what I long for", or William Carlos Williams has a funny line at the endof a poem called "The Clouds" where he breaks off in he middle of the sentence because he couldn't.. can't say any more (he's talking about the people getting abstract and not being down to cases, not talking about "for instance"s and not being down to earth, saying their imaginations plunging on a moth, a butterfly, a pismire, a….. - and he ends "a", dot dot dot dot dot, or in the poem "For Eleanor and Bill Monahan" - "The moon which was latterly the poets planet they have..rediscovered, or they've taken over for scientific purposes..the fools, what do they think they will find..that death has not already shown them/Those ships should be directed inward upon/but I'm an old man , I've had enough…" - That was, just as you would talk, just as you would say it, just as you would think it, with a break. He didn't have to finish the sentence, he already said it - Those ships should be directed inward upon/but I'm an old man , I've had enough…" - (14) "Like Proust, be an old teahead of time" - "Like Proust, be an old teahead of time" - In other words, as Proust had the total recall, or conducted a total recall of all of the details of his life, very appreciatively, like a tea-head who had, having sipped a little grass and gottten very high was begining to appreciate all the cracks in the china bowl and all the tiny little flowers blooming in his back yard out the window, and appreciating the purple drapes and the paisley coverings for the sofa, and remembering the paisley coverings of the sofa in his aunt's house and the taste of tea and little crackers, way back when he was a kid visiting suburbs, to visit his aunt, so remembering all the details - "Like Proust, be an old teahead of time" - (15) "Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog" - the way you would think it to yourself - "Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog" - (16) "The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye" (I'll xerox these up for you by tomorrow, so you don't have to worry about it, unless you're speed stenographers, or something) - (17) "Write in recollection and amazement for yourself" - Kerouac wrote all that stuff.. I remember he used to, before it was published, he had it all lined up, neatly-typed, on his shelf, and he said, "I want to have something so I can read something, something interesting in my old age - "Write in recollection and amazement for yourself" - (18) "Work from pithy middle eye, swimming in language sea" - In other words, stumbling over your own tongue to tell the story, as if you were talking to your best friend, in bed. (19) "Accept loss forever" - that's a basic Kerouac tragic Buddhist idea - Accept loss forever - because his first big book was about his father dying and his second book was fare-thee-well-beloveds, you and your kids, On The Road, and then the third or fourth book, Visions of Gerard, is about the death of his nine-year-old, or six-year-old, elder brother. So "Accept loss forever", and actually, for prose that really is, if you write with a realization that you're writing about a world that'll be gone in the twinkling of an eye by the time the book is published, so you're writing about a ghost world, you "accept loss forever" .It gives poignance and emotion to your view of the world that you're writing about when you realize you're already writing.. you're already writing about already ghosts. Life is a dream already ended. That was Kerouac's phrase. (20) "Believe in the holy contour of life" - So that would be the same as "Be in love with your life", or similar, but, in terms of the novelist, or the life-time poet tracing year after year the changes and contours of his own mind and his own soul and his own loves and his own works and his own moves from cities to cities - contour.. Be in love.. ""Believe in the holy contour of life"

1 Did I create that sky? Yes, for, if it was anything other than a conception in my mind I wouldnt have said 'Sky'-That is why I am the golden eternity. There are not two of us here, reader and writer, but one, one golden eternity, One-Which-It-Is, That-Which- Everything-Is.

2 The awakened Buddha to show the way, the chosen Messiah to die in the degradation of sentience, is the golden eternity. One that is what is, the golden eternity, or, God, or, Tathagata-the name. The Named One. The human God. Sentient Godhood. Animate Divine. The Deified One. The Verified One. The Free One. The Liberator. The Still One. The settled One. The Established One. Golden Eternity. All is Well. The Empty One. The Ready One. The Quitter. The Sitter. The Justified One. The Happy One.

3 That sky, if it was anything other than an illusion of my mortal mind I wouldnt have said 'that sky.' Thus I made that sky, I am the golden eternity. I am Mortal Golden Eternity.

4 I was awakened to show the way, chosen to die in the degradation of life, because I am Mortal Golden Eternity.

5 I am the golden eternity in mortal animate form.

6 Strictly speaking, there is no me, because all is emptiness. I am empty, I am non-existent. All is bliss.

7 This truth law has no more reality than the world.

8 You are the golden eternity because there is no me and no you, only one golden eternity.

9 The Realizer. Entertain no imaginations whatever, for the thing is a no-thing. Knowing this then is Human Godhood.

10 This world is the movie of what everything is, it is one movie, made of the same stuff throughout, belonging to nobody, which is what everything is.

11 If we were not all the golden eternity we wouldnt be here. Because we are here we cant help being pure. To tell man to be pure on account of the punishing angel that punishes the bad and the rewarding angel that rewards the good would be like telling the water 'Be Wet'-Never the less, all things depend on supreme reality, which is already established as the record of Karma earned-fate.

12 God is not outside us but is just us, the living and the dead, the never-lived and never-died. That we should learn it only now, is supreme reality, it was written a long time ago in the archives of universal mind, it is already done, there's no more to do.

13 This is the knowledge that sees the golden eternity in all things, which is us, you, me, and which is no longer us, you, me.

14 What name shall we give it which hath no name, the common eternal matter of the mind? If we were to call it essence, some might think it meant perfume, or gold, or honey. It is not even mind. It is not even discussible, groupable into words; it is not even endless, in fact it is not even mysterious or inscrutably inexplicable; it is what is; it is that; it is this. We could easily call the golden eternity 'This.' But 'what's in a name?' asked Shakespeare. The golden eternity by another name would be as sweet. A Tathagata, a God, a Buddha by another name, an Allah, a Sri Krishna, a Coyote, a Brahma, a Mazda, a Messiah, an Amida, an Aremedeia, a Maitreya, a Palalakonuh, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 would be as sweet. The golden eternity is X, the golden eternity is A, the golden eternity is /\, the golden eternity is O, the golden eternity is [ ], the golden eternity is t-h-e-g-o-l-d-e-n-e-t-e-r- n-i-t-y. In the beginning was the word; before the beginning, in the beginningless infinite neverendingness, was the essence. Both the word 'god' and the essence of the word, are emptiness. The form of emptiness which is emptiness having taken the form of form, is what you see and hear and feel right now, and what you taste and smell and think as you read this. Wait awhile, close your eyes, let your breathing stop three seconds or so, listen to the inside silence in the womb of the world, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, re-recognize the bliss you forgot, the emptiness and essence and ecstasy of ever having been and ever to be the golden eternity. This is the lesson you forgot.

15 The lesson was taught long ago in the other world systems that have naturally changed into the empty and awake, and are here now smiling in our smile and scowling in our scowl. It is only like the golden eternity pretending to be smiling and scowling to itself; like a ripple on the smooth ocean of knowing. The fate of humanity is to vanish into the golden eternity, return pouring into its hands which are not hands. The navel shall receive, invert, and take back what'd issued forth; the ring of flesh shall close; the personalities of long dead heroes are blank dirt.

16 The point is we're waiting, not how comfortable we are while waiting. Paleolithic man waited by caves for the realization of why he was there, and hunted; modern men wait in beautified homes and try to forget death and birth. We're waiting for the realization that this is the golden eternity.

17 It came on time.

18 There is a blessedness surely to be believed, and that is that everything abides in eternal ecstasy, now and forever.

19 Mother Kali eats herself back. All things but come to go. All these holy forms, unmanifest, not even forms, truebodies of blank bright ecstasy, abiding in a trance, 'in emptiness and silence' as it is pointed out in the Diamond-cutter, asked to be only what they are: GLAD.

20 The secret God-grin in the trees and in the teapot, in ashes and fronds, fire and brick, flesh and mental human hope. All things, far from yearning to be re-united with God, had never left themselves and here they are, Dharmakaya, the body of the truth law, the universal Thisness.

21 'Beyond the reach of change and fear, beyond all praise and blame,' the Lankavatara Scripture knows to say, is he who is what he is in time and time-less-ness, in ego and in ego-less-ness, in self and in self-less-ness.

22 Stare deep into the world before you as if it were the void: innumerable holy ghosts, buddhies, and savior gods there hide, smiling. All the atoms emitting light inside wavehood, there is no personal separation of any of it. A hummingbird can come into a house and a hawk will not: so rest and be assured. While looking for the light, you may suddenly be devoured by the darkness and find the true light.

23 Things dont tire of going and coming. The flies end up with the delicate viands.

24 The cause of the world's woe is birth, The cure of the world's woe is a bent stick.

25 Though it is everything, strictly speaking there is no golden eternity because everything is nothing: there are no things and no goings and comings: for all is emptiness, and emptiness is these forms, emptiness is this one formhood.

26 All these selfnesses have already vanished. Einstein measured that this present universe is an expanding bubble, and you know what that means.

27 Discard such definite imaginations of phenomena as your own self, thou human being, thou'rt a numberless mass of sun-motes: each mote a shrine. The same as to your shyness of other selves, selfness as divided into infinite numbers of beings, or selfness as identified as one self existing eternally. Be obliging and noble, be generous with your time and help and possessions, and be kind, because the emptiness of this little place of flesh you carry around and call your soul, your entity, is the same emptiness in every direction of space unmeasurable emptiness, the same, one, and holy emptiness everywhere: why be selfy and unfree, Man God, in your dream? Wake up, thou'rt selfless and free. 'Even and upright your mind abides nowhere,' states Hui Neng of China. We're all in heaven now.

28 Roaring dreams take place in a perfectly silent mind. Now that we know this, throw the raft away.

29 Are you tightwad and are you mean, those are the true sins, and sin is only a conception of ours, due to long habit. Are you generous and are you kind, those are the true virtues, and they're only conceptions. The golden eternity rests beyond sin and virtue, is attached to neither, is attached to nothing, is unattached, because the golden eternity is Alone. The mold has rills but it is one mold. The field has curves but it is one field. All things are different forms of the same thing. I call it the golden eternity-what do you call it, brother? for the blessing and merit of virtue, and the punishment and bad fate of sin, are alike just so many words.

30 Sociability is a big smile, and a big smile is nothing but teeth. Rest and be kind.

31 There's no need to deny that evil thing called GOOGOO, which doesnt exist, just as there's no need to deny that evil thing called Sex and Rebirth, which also doesn't exist, as it is only a form of emptiness. The bead of semen comes from a long line of awakened natures that were your parent, a holy flow, a succession of saviors pouring from the womb of the dark void and back into it, fantastic magic imagination of the lightning, flash, plays, dreams, not even plays, dreams.

32 'The womb of exuberant fertility,' Ashvhaghosha called it, radiating forms out of its womb of exuberant emptiness. In emptiness there is no Why, no knowledge of Why, no ignorance of Why, no asking and no answering of Why, and no significance attached to this.

33 A disturbed and frightened man is like the golden eternity experimentally pretending at feeling the disturbed-and-frightened mood; a calm and joyous man, is like the golden eternity pretending at experimenting with that experience; a man experiencing his Sentient Being, is like the golden eternity pretending at trying that out too; a man who has no thoughts, is like the golden eternity pretending at being itself; because the emptiness of everything has no beginning and no end and at present is infinite.

34 'Love is all in all,' said Sainte Therese, choosing Love for her vocation and pouring out her happiness, from her garden by the gate, with a gentle smile, pouring roses on the earth, so that the beggar in the thunderbolt received of the endless offering of her dark void. Man goes a-beggaring into nothingness. 'Ignorance is the father, Habit-Energy is the Mother.' Opposites are not the same for the same reason they are the same.

35 The words 'atoms of dust' and 'the great universes' are only words. The idea that they imply is only an idea. The belief that we live here in this existence, divided into various beings, passing food in and out of ourselves, and casting off husks of bodies one after another with no cessation and no definite or particular discrimination, is only an idea. The seat of our Immortal Intelligence can be seen in that beating light between the eyes the Wisdom Eye of the ancients: we know what we're doing: we're not disturbed: because we're like the golden eternity pretending at playing the magic cardgame and making believe it's real, it's a big dream, a joyous ecstasy of words and ideas and flesh, an ethereal flower unfolding a folding back, a movie, an exuberant bunch of lines bounding emptiness, the womb of Avalokitesvara, a vast secret silence, springtime in the Void, happy young gods talking and drinking on a cloud. Our 32,000 chillicosms bear all the marks of excellence. Blind milky light fills our night; and the morning is crystal.

36 Give a gift to your brother, but there's no gift to compare with the giving of assurance that he is the golden eternity. The true understanding of this would bring tears to your eyes. The other shore is right here, forgive and forget, protect and reassure. Your tormenters will be purified. Raise thy diamond hand. Have faith and wait. The course of your days is a river rumbling over your rocky back. You're sitting at the bottom of the world with a head of iron. Religion is thy sad heart. You're the golden eternity and it must be done by you. And means one thing: Nothing-Ever-Happened. This is the golden eternity.

37 When the Prince of the Kalinga severed the flesh from the limbs and body of Buddha, even then the Buddha was free from any such ideas as his own self, other self, living beings divided into many selves, or living beings united and identified into one eternal self. The golden eternity isnt 'me.' Before you can know that you're dreaming you'll wake up, Atman. Had the Buddha, the Awakened One, cherished any of these imaginary judgments of and about things, he would have fallen into impatience and hatred in his suffering. Instead, like Jesus on the Cross he saw the light and died kind, loving all living things.

38 The world was spun out of a blade of grass: the world was spun out of a mind. Heaven was spun out of a blade of grass: heaven was spun out of a mind. Neither will do you much good, neither will do you much harm. The Oriental imperturbed, is the golden eternity.

39 He is called a Yogi, his is called a Priest, a Minister, a Brahmin, a Parson, a Chaplain, a Roshi, a Laoshih, a Master, a Patriarch, a Pope, a Spiritual Commissar, a Counselor, and Adviser, a Bodhisattva-Mahasattva, an Old Man, a Saint, a Shaman, a Leader, who thinks nothing of himself as separate from another self, not higher nor lower, no stages and no definite attainments, no mysterious stigmata or secret holyhood, no wild dark knowledge and no venerable authoritativeness, nay a giggling sage sweeping out of the kitchen with a broom. After supper, a silent smoke. Because there is no definite teaching: the world is undisciplined. Nature endlessly in every direction inward to your body and outward into space.

40 Meditate outdoors. The dark trees at night are not really the dark trees at night, it's only the golden eternity.

41 A mosquito as big as Mount Everest is much bigger than you think: a horse's hoof is more delicate than it looks. An altar consecrated to the golden eternity, filled with roses and lotuses and diamonds, is the cell of the humble prisoner, the cell so cold and dreary. Boethius kissed the Robe of the Mother Truth in a Roman dungeon.

42 Do you think the emptiness of the sky will ever crumble away? Every little child knows that everybody will go to heaven. Knowing that nothing ever happened is not really knowing that nothing ever happened, it's the golden eternity. In other words, nothing can compare with telling your brother and your sister that what happened, what is happening, and what will happen, never really happened, is not really happening and never will happen, it is only the golden eternity. Nothing was ever born, nothing will ever die. Indeed, it didnt even happen that you heard about golden eternity through the accidental reading of this scripture. The thing is easily false. There are no warnings whatever issuing from the golden eternity: do what you want.

43 Even in dreams be kind, because anyway there is no time, no space, no mind. 'It's all not-born,' said Bankei of Japan, whose mother heard this from her son did what we call 'died happy.' And even if she had died unhappy, dying unhappy is not really dying unhappy, it's the golden eternity. It's impossible to exist, it's impossible to be persecuted, it's impossible to miss your reward.

44 Eight hundred and four thousand myriads of Awakened Ones throughout numberless swirls of epochs appeared to work hard to save a grain of sand, and it was only the golden eternity. And their combined reward will be no greater and no lesser than what will be won by a piece of dried turd. It's a reward beyond thought.

45 When you've understood this scripture, throw it away. If you cant understand this scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom.

46 O everlasting Eternity, all things and all truth laws are no- things, in three ways, which is the same way: AS THINGS OF TIME they dont exist because there is no furthest atom than can be found or weighed or grasped, it is emptiness through and through, matter and empty space too. AS THINGS OF MIND they dont exist, because the mind that conceives and makes them out does so by seeing, hearing touching, smelling, tasting, and mentally-noticing and without this mind they would not be seen or heard or felt or smelled or tasted or mentally-noticed, they are discriminated that which they're not necessarily by imaginary judgments of the mind, they are actually dependent on the mind that makes them out, by themselves they are no-things, they are really mental, seen only of the mind, they are really empty visions of the mind, heaven is a vision, everything is a vision. What does it mean that I am in this endless universe thinking I'm a man sitting under the stars on the terrace of earth, but actually empty and awake throughout the emptiness and awakedness of everything? It means that I am empty and awake, knowing that I am empty and awake, and that there's no difference between me and anything else. It means that I have attained to that which everything is.

47 The-Attainer-To-That-Which-Everything-Is, the Sanskrit Tathagata, has no ideas whatever but abides in essence identically with the essence of all things, which is what it is, in emptiness and silence. Imaginary meaning stretched to make mountains and as far as the germ is concerned it stretched even further to make molehills. A million souls dropped through hell but nobody saw them or counted them. A lot of large people isnt really a lot of large people, it's only the golden eternity. When St. Francis went to heaven he did not add to heaven nor detract from earth. Locate silence, possess space, spot me the ego. 'From the beginning,' said the Sixth Patriarch of the China School, 'not a thing is.'

48 He who loves all life with his pity and intelligence isnt really he who loves all life with his pity and intelligence, it's only natural. The universe is fully known because it is ignored. Enlightenment comes when you dont care. This is a good tree stump I'm sitting on. You cant even grasp your own pain let alone your eternal reward. I love you because you're me. I love you because there's nothing else to do. It's just the natural golden eternity.

49 What does it mean that those trees and mountains are magic and unreal?- It means that those trees and mountains are magic and unreal. What does it mean that those trees and mountains are not magic but real?- it means that those trees and mountains are not magic but real. Men are just making imaginary judgments both ways, and all the time it's just the same natural golden eternity.

50 If the golden eternity was anything other than mere words, you could not have said 'golden eternity.' This means that the words are used to point at the endless nothingness of reality. If the endless nothingness of reality was anything other than mere words, you could not have said 'endless nothingness of reality,' you could not have said it. This means that the golden eternity is out of our word-reach, it refuses steadfastly to be described, it runs away from us and leads us in. The name is not really the name. The same way, you could not have said 'this world' if this world was anything other than mere words. There's nothing there but just that. They've long known that there's nothing to life but just the living of it. It Is What It Is and That's All It Is.

51 There's no system of teaching and no reward for teaching the golden eternity, because nothing has happened. In the golden eternity teaching and reward havent even vanished let alone appeared. The golden eternity doesnt even have to be perfect. It is very silly of me to talk about it. I talk about it simply because here I am dreaming that I talk about it in a dream already ended, ages ago, from which I'm already awake, and it was only an empty dreaming, in fact nothing whatever, in fact nothing ever happened at all. The beauty of attaining the golden eternity is that nothing will be acquired, at last.

52 Kindness and sympathy, understanding and encouragement, these give: they are better than just presents and gifts: no reason in the world why not. Anyhow, be nice. Remember the golden eternity is yourself. 'If someone will simply practice kindness,' said Gotama to Subhuti, 'he will soon attain highest perfect wisdom.' Then he added: 'Kindness after all is only a word and it should be done on the spot without thought of kindness.' By practicing kindness all over with everyone you will soon come into the holy trance, infinite distinctions of personalities will become what they really mysteriously are, our common and eternal blissstuff, the pureness of everything forever, the great bright essence of mind, even and one thing everywhere the holy eternal milky love, the white light everywhere everything, emptybliss, svaha, shining, ready, and awake, the compassion in the sound of silence, the swarming myriad trillionaire you are.

53 Everything's alright, form is emptiness and emptiness is form, and we're here forever, in one form or another, which is empty. Everything's alright, we're not here, there, or anywhere. Everything's alright, cats sleep.

54 The everlasting and tranquil essence, look around and see the smiling essence everywhere. How wily was the world made, Maya, not-even-made.

55 There's the world in the daylight. If it was completely dark you wouldnt see it but it would still be there. If you close your eyes you really see what it's like: mysterious particle-swarming emptiness. On the moon big mosquitos of straw know this in the kindness of their hearts. Truly speaking, unrecognizably sweet it all is. Don't worry about nothing.

56 Imaginary judgments about things, in the Nothing-Ever-Happened wonderful void, you dont even have to reject them, let alone accept them. 'That looks like a tree, let's call it a tree,' said Coyote to Earthmaker at the beginning, and they walked around the rootdrinker patting their bellies.

57 Perfectly selfless, the beauty of it, the butterfly doesnt take it as a personal achievement, he just disappears through the trees. You too, kind and humble and not-even-here, it wasnt in a greedy mood that you saw the light that belongs to everybody.

58 Look at your little finger, the emptiness of it is no different than the emptiness of infinity.

59 Cats yawn because they realize that there's nothing to do.

60 Up in heaven you wont remember all these tricks of yours. You wont even sigh 'Why?' Whether as atomic dust or as great cities, what's the difference in all this stuff. A tree is still only a rootdrinker. The puma's twisted face continues to look at the blue sky with sightless eyes, Ah sweet divine and indescribable verdurous paradise planted in mid-air! Caitanya, it's only consciousness. Not with thoughts of your mind, but in the believing sweetness of your heart, you snap the link and open the golden door and disappear into the bright room, the everlasting ecstasy, eternal Now. Soldier, follow me! - there never was a war. Arjuna, dont fight! - why fight over nothing? Bless and sit down.

61 I remember that I'm supposed to be a man and consciousness and I focus my eyes and the print reappears and the words of the poor book are saying, 'The world, as God has made it' and there are no words in my pitying heart to express the knowless loveliness of the trance there was before I read those words, I had no such idea that there was a world.

62 This world has no marks, signs, or evidence of existence, nor the noises in it, like accident of wind or voices or heehawing animals, yet listen closely the eternal hush of silence goes on and on throughout all this, and has been gong on, and will go on and on. This is because the world is nothing but a dream and is just thought of and the everlasting eternity pays no attention to it. At night under the moon, or in a quiet room, hush now, the secret music of the Unborn goes on and on, beyond conception, awake beyond existence. Properly speaking, awake is not really awake because the golden eternity never went to sleep; you can tell by the constant sound of Silence which cuts through this world like a magic diamond through the trick of your not realizing that your mind caused the world.

63 The God of the American Plateau Indian was Coyote. He says: 'Earth! those beings living on your surface, none of them disappearing, will all be transformed. When I have spoken to them, when they have spoken to me, from that moment on, their words and their bodies which they usually use to move about with, will all change. I will not have heard them.'

64 I was smelling flowers in the yard, and when I stood up I took a deep breath and the blood all rushed to my brain and I woke up dead on my back in the grass. I had apparently fainted, or died, for about sixty seconds. My neighbor saw me but he thought I had just suddenly thrown myself on the grass to enjoy the sun. During that timeless moment of unconsciousness I saw the golden eternity. I saw heaven. In it nothing had ever happened, the events of a million years ago were just as phantom and ungraspable as the events of now, or the events of the next ten minutes. It was perfect, the golden solitude, the golden emptiness, Something-Or- Other, something surely humble. There was a rapturous ring of silence abiding perfectly. There was no question of being alive or not being alive, of likes and dislikes, of near or far, no question of giving or gratitude, no question of mercy or judgment, or of suffering or its opposite or anything. It was the womb itself, aloneness, alaya vijnana the universal store, the Great Free Treasure, the Great Victory, infinite completion, the joyful mysterious essence of Arrangement. It seemed like one smiling smile, one adorable adoration, one gracious and adorable charity, everlasting safety, refreshing afternoon, roses, infinite brilliant immaterial gold ash, the Golden Age. The 'golden' came from the sun in my eyelids, and the 'eternity' from my sudden instant realization as I woke up that I had just been where it all came from and where it was all returning, the everlasting So, and so never coming or going; therefore I call it the golden eternity but you can call it anything you want. As I regained consciousness I felt so sorry I had a body and a mind suddenly realizing I didn't even have a body and a mind and nothing had ever happened and everything is alright forever and forever and forever, O thank you thank you thank you.

65 This is the first teaching from the golden eternity.

66 The second teaching from the golden eternity is that there never was a first teaching from the golden eternity. So be sure.